Social Psychology of Prejudice

When you meet someone new, you make a guess about their gender, race/ethnicity, and age. You do this really quickly and often without thought. These group identities then guide how you interact with that person and your own sense of yourself. Here, we’ll read scientific articles about group biases. We’ll learn about bias in minds (how individual people think) and bias in systems (collective, institutional). We’ll learn about different ways the mind works (psychological processes) that contribute to biases and discrimination. We’ll often focus on gender and race/ethnicity groups. But you’ll also learn about groups more generally.